The invention relates to a method of transferring a phone number already stored in a phone number database of a phone from a memory location without speed dialing facility to a memory location with speed dialing facility, without this causing loss of information already saved. The invention moreover relates to a phone for performing the method.
Hand-portable phones give the user the possibility of storing a plurality of phone numbers electronically. The actual storage may take place in a RAM in the phone, but will typically take place in a memory on a SIM card, and the resulting database will follow the SIM card and thus the phone subscription instead of the phone. The user may typically save 50-100 phone numbers having up to 30 digits and an associated name of about letters. These data may vary from SIM card supplier to SIM card supplier. The phone numbers will typically be stored in serially numbered memory locations, e.g. 1-100. A group of phone numbers--typically the numbers stored in the memory locations 2-9--will be accessible as short dialing numbers, which means that in the idle mode of the phone the user can make a call to a phone number stored in e.g. location #3 by depressing the "3" key for e.g. 0.5-1.0 second.
This feature, convenient and very useful to the user, is available only to a small group of numbers in the total number database. It may frequently be expedient to add new numbers to the group of speed dialing numbers, since the phone numbers most frequently called frequently change. It will be possible to overwrite an existing memory location in the speed dialing number group by adding a new number, but this will involve loss of data, which will thus have to be entered again. Further, it is not desired to extend the group of speed dialing numbers, since it will be too difficult to remember the short dialing code for speed dialing numbers used less frequently.